The Party Hostel

Did I mention the free beer? Good. Did I mention that the password for the wi-fi at the hostel was “partyhostel”? No? Ah, well it is, and that is what it prides itself on. And we clearly hadn’t read the reviews and/or full description on the website. But it’s OK because if you fancy a quiet one then you are not forced down into the party dungeon to socialise with people from all over......well, Europe as it turns out! So I may well leave a glowing review as the organiser/compare/crazy man keeps asking us to do. Did I also mention that there are no towels to use as such? Well there aren’t. So, rather than dig out my travel towel and then struggle getting it back into its little bag I decided to use one of my two bedheets they had provided me with. Again, this trip is not about glitz and glamour, so I made do with it as best I could. One of our bunkmates, Pankaj, was to leave us that morning and as people couldn’t check-in to the room til 15:00 we knew we would at least have a few hours of relative peace.

Sunday morning began with a morning stroll down to the edge of the bay where all the piers were to be found. They were as numerous as they were diverse, with one of them having the Alcatraz boat trip which we had both decided would be expensive and not great value for money. Plus you have to book way in advance and as you will have realised we have done a lot of this trip “flying by the seat of our pants” as it were. We had also been told to hit Pier 39, so we continued counting the pier numbers until we got there, and found a LOT of tourists. It’s a very commercialised area with gift shops, restaurant and all manner of tat being offered your way. Even a “magician” who was only working for tips, and he had already made his dignity disappear a long time ago. We saw Alcatraz from across the water and that was just fine by us, just as we had done with the Statue of Liberty in New York. We sat down for lunch in the shade (as James was having hot-head syndrome) and I greatly enjoyed one of Americas favourite meals – peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Pier 39, San Francisco

With food in our bellies (and licence for our tellies – see Paulo Nutini for this reference) we continued our walk down by the bay and then headed inland and up the steep hills that San Francisco is famous for. The first district we hit was Russian Hill (no idea why it is so called) and we marvelled at the trams coasting by, up and down the almost-impossible gradients. A strange noise entered our ears as we stood there by the side of the road and we turned to see a young lad on a BMX screaming down the hill towards the crossroads at the bottom. Using his shoes on the road as additional brakes we watched as he continued his descent, half hoping he would and half hoping he would not hit the car at the crossroads, and/or fall off in the process. He was then followed by two more BMX riders, but they all came to a halt without any harm. The legs were taking a pounding that day and we reasoned that we would have thighs like Roberto Carlos by the end of this trip. Further up the hill we happened across a street that I knew from a computer game called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (modelled on San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles) that weaved down the steep hill and was lined with beautiful gardens along the way. Aptly named “crookedest street” it was great little bonus to the day and broke up the day as we stopped to get some pics. We continued down to Washington Square (a pretty mediocre park) and the Coit Tower, the latter giving fantastic vistas of the city from up high. After that we arrived in Chinatown (seemed pretty much like any other Chinatown we have visited so far) and then Nob Hill (ahem) before seeing what was going on at Union Square. Some posh shops really weren’t going to entice us in so we called it a day and headed back to the ranch to freshen up before dinner.

A bit hilly...

I had selected a place called Mel’s Drive In, not because it is the name of my uncle back in Formby (although it is), but because the Man v Food places I had looked for were miles away and we were shattered. In order to have a decent number of beers that night, accounting for the free stuff running out fairly soon, we decided to get a six-pack of beers in from an offy and stick them in the fridge for afters. But we had been working on “middle-America prices” and were stunned when we had tried 4 liquor stores and none of them had anything cheaper than $2 per drink (the yard stick was for less than a buck a beer). We didn’t like this but grudgingly bought a six-pack of Bud for $12 and snuck them into the hostel. We didn’t need to sneak them in, but we felt we had to for some reason, maybe a flashback to the Parthenon in Chicago. As we knew the system now we sauntered down as the guy was half-way through his speech about the hostel and sponsors, etc, and headed straight for the bar once the basement door was finally unlocked. Assuming our usual position between the poker and the beer pong we gulped our watery beer and chatted with any bystanders who seemed not-a-psycho. Or the guy who wore his tight leather jacket buttoned right the way to the top and had a cigarette in his mouth the entire time, without ever lighting it. Sadly, the pretty German girls from the night before were nowhere to be seen, but I started up a chat with the guy standing next to me by the beer pong. His name was Simon, and he was from Denmark, and an avid beer ponger. He was staying in the hostel with his friend, who was playing poker (and losing), but they had been put in a room with another Dane, Lars. Once the first game of beer pong had finished we (me and Simon) were challenged by the winners, but for a team of 5. So we managed to persuade the 4 Irish girls to play who had been watching and we set about chucking the ball into the beer as required. It all got very messy and Simon was the only one who knew the rules, but with so many new players and people around there were balls flying everywhere and the rulebook went out of the window. Later, myself and Lars would have a “blackball game” against a couple of others, and I still don’t think I got a single ball in one of the cups. With me playing beer pong, James was chatting away to whoever sauntered up near the table and was happy enough with free beer in hand and a steady stream of new people and cultures to discover. As the beer pong stretched on into the night James went upstairs to grab one of the Tactical Budweisers and do some blogging, as I tried to gain a little bit of dignity among the other hostellers. After the beer pong had finished, I could no longer find James, but myself and Lars were more than happy to chat to the group of Swedish girls who were staying on floor 3. By the end of the night “a few beers” had made the clock say half 1 in the morning, so I clambered into bed to sleep off the beers and to hopefully memorise the rules to a fantastic new game that I will definitely be bringing back to England with me!